On this glorious Wednesday I would like to share with you one of my absolute favorite paintings.

This, dear readers, is Gabrielle d’Estrées sua sorella la duchessa di villars or the title of the post if you’d like it in English.

It was painted around 1594 though the artist is unknown.

It currently resides in the Louvre. And I hope to possess a print of it one day.

The titular Gabrielle (heh) is on the right. She and her sister are in a bath tub. Gabrielle was the mistress of King Henry IV of France.

One of the interpretations is that the painting signifies Gabrielle’s pregnancy with King Henry’s child.

Here is the Wikipedia article with more information and a much larger version of the painting, should you want a version large enough for a wallpaper.

One of my favorite quotes from the article is this:

In the early years of the seventeenth century, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme tells a story about a group of women who went to view the painting. … Brantôme reveals that while the group of women were viewing the painting, “one great lady” who was a part of the group “los[t] all restraint…before the picture, say[ing] to her lover, turning toward him [as if] maddened [by] the madness of love she beheld [in the painting]: ‘Too long have we tarried here. Let us now straightway take [my] coach and go to my lodging; for…no more can I hold in the ardor that is in me. Needs must away and quench it; too sore do I burn.'”

It made me wonder how posts on Fetlife would read if people wrote that way now. Because now it would be: My Dom and I saw this painting of a woman pinching another woman’s nipple and I said, ‘We’ve been looking at this too long; I’m horny now. We have to get back to the hotel so you can fuck me stupid.’